How the Politics of Snow Works

By Iain Martin

LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches…unless there’s snow in which case we’ll complain a lot.

Plucky Londoners are battling the worst snow since last year, which

was the worst since the previous year. Presumably it is a coincidence that the weather turns into a hot political story only after freezing cold snow hits the capital.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond is the man in the frame, and he’s putting up a strong fight with round the clock appearances on rolling news channels. But there are a number of ways this could go. If there is little more snow, air travel gets back to normal within 24 hours and the South East can make it to work this week unimpeded then the story probably dies. Substantially more snow with major transport disruption and Philip Hammond has a problem.

Christmas Eve is just 96 hours away, the day that kicks off the hectic period in which Britons begin a series of mad dashes around the country to visit relatives and engage in family arguments.

There are only three things the British love more than weather. The first is moaning about weather in general. The second is complaining about the country’s unpreparedness for snow. But above both sits all aspects of Christmas. Combine the lot — weather, a chance to complain about a specific weather event, a lack of preparedness for snow and Christmas disrupted — and you have a combustible news cocktail. Forget the tuition fees protests, if a government minister wants to experience real public and media anger he could arrange to be accused of messing up Christmas for a sizeable number of voters by failing to ensure that there is sufficient gritting.

Hammond will complain, quite rightly, that this is unfair and that he lacks the power to prevent severe weather. But there is very little that is fair about the politics of snow.

Watching our political class — as much in need of a proper holiday as the rest of the Britain – I make several observations:

1) Labour spokesmen, such as shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, have been accused of political opportunism because they are asking if the government is doing enough to deal with the snow. Johnson’s critics are missing the point — of course there is opportunism involved. The Tories know this, and used to do the same themselves during snow, floods etc. There isn’t all that much fun to be had in opposition, but after 13 years of being the party that had to produce spokesmen to go on TV to look out of touch Labour is currently enjoying playing “I blame the government”. There aren’t all that many votes in it when something like the weather is involved (unless there is obvious incompetence, as there was with the SNP’s transport minister who had to resign). But apply the right kind of pressure — as the street-wise Johnson is — and all kinds of temporary havoc can be created in a government. All one needs to suggest is that a report on severe snow by some chap from a reliable sounding organisation was commissioned by the previous government and was on the desk of the incoming transport minister. Why has the report been ignored? Who knew? Why weren’t it’s recommendations implemented? (They probably were.) Before you know it, Philip Hammond’s Christmas has been ruined as he spends most of his time doing interviews for rolling news channels and the rest being filmed spending the night at a Department of Transport emergency weather HQ set up hastily by press officers in Whitehall. Labour ministers have had to do this sort of stuff for years, whilst their Tory opposite numbers demanded something must be done. The positions are now reversed, and Labour needing cheered up will take its pleasure where it can find it.

2) Look out for the involvement of the Prime Minister. The snow story goes up a gear if he takes charge at any point. If Cameron convenes an emergency snow summit at Number 10, or even if it is briefed by Number 10 to the media that he has asked for urgent briefings from Hammond and his team on the “crisis”, then you know it spells trouble. Cameron takes a chairman of the board view of his job, rather than employing a hands on chief executive approach, but he’ll intervene if he thinks there’s a risk of substantial damage to the government’s reputation. All it would take would be the PM’s mother or brother being stuck in snow on the M40 on their way back from Christmas shopping and Hammond’s jacket would be on a shooglie peg (as it is put in Scotland).

3) Have any newspaper editors been trapped in the snow? Very important aspect of the developing story this one, particularly for Hammond. If the answer is yes, and it’s the editor of a really big selling newspaper, then the Transport Secretary has a huge problem. If so, leading articles will be written saying that the “chaos” shames Britain. It can be depended upon that demands will also be made for heads to roll. If there were to be more than one editor stranded in the snow it is difficult to see how Hammond could survive.

4) But none of this is directly the government’s fault? Well, yes, of course. Thus far Hammond has tried a novel strategy: he’s staying wedded to rationalism. He’s asking people to be reasonable and maintaining that in the circumstances everything is broadly ok. The strategic roads are all open and the problems at Heathrow and Gatwick are similar to those faced in other snow-bound parts of Europe. It is, he says, a mistake to claim that every other country suffers no disruption with this much snow. You get a lot of snow, you get problems. Let’s keep calm and carry on. But it’s a high risk approach. Such an analysis might have worked in the years before rolling news channels were invented. But now? Pressure can be applied around the clock. Hammond tried his rational schtick on various TV interviewers and the underlying tone of the interviewers was menacing and the implication clear: “Something must be done.” I’m not sure that rationalism is going to be enough.

5) Some good news for the government and Philip Hammond. People, particularly we journalists, tend to forget quite quickly. The human brain seems designed to filter out and suppress memories of all but the worst trauma. At the time of the Icelandic ash cloud, and the havoc wrought on U.K. air traffic, there was widespread journalistic panic. It was said widely that the government should do something; I fear I penned an excitable blog post suggesting as much, and I was not alone in doing so. At the height of the crisis, Gordon Brown pondered sending the Ark Royal aircraft carrier to Calais to ferry home Britons stranded on the continent, even though it is too big to dock there and thus of almost no use as a people carrier. Other sensible ministers including the then Chancellor talked him out of it. Within a few weeks, once life was back to normal, it was pretty much all forgotten. Now, when pictures of the erupting volcano are shown, people say: “Ooh, how spectacular and rather beautiful it was”, rather than “if Willie Walsh, the boss of BA is prepared to go up in a plane to risk death and prove it won’t crash from the effects of volcanic ash then why won’t the government get the civil aviation authorities to bend the rules and let the planes fly?”

Philip Hammond must hope that the snow situation doesn’t worsen to such an extent that there are demands for retribution and suggestions that a sacrifice, such as the transport secretary’s promising career, is required. But if he can get through it all in one piece, the snow “chaos” will be forgotten as soon as the sun comes out and the temperature goes up.

LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill: We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets…unless there’s a little bit of snow in which case we whine and a lot and look for people to blame.

Plucky Londoners are battling the worst snow since last year, which was the worst since the previous year. Presumably it is a coincidence that the weather turns into a hot political story only after freezing cold snow hits the capital.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond is the man in the frame, and he’s putting up a strong fight with round the clock appearances on rolling news channels. But there are a number of ways this could go. If there is little more snow, air travel gets back to normal within 24 hours and the South East can make it to work this week unimpeded then the story probably dies. Substantially more snow with major transport disruption and Philip Hammond has a problem.

Christmas Eve is just 96 hours away, the day that kicks off the hectic period in which Britons begin a series of mad dashes around the country to visit relatives and engage in family arguments.

There are only three things the British love more than weather. The first is moaning about weather in general. The second is complaining about the country’s unpreparedness for snow. But above both sits all aspects of Christmas. Combine the lot — weather, a chance to complain about a specific weather event, a lack of preparedness for snow and Christmas disrupted — and you have a combustible news cocktail. Forget the tuition fees protests, if a government minister wants to experience real public and media anger he could arrange to be accused of messing up Christmas for a sizeable number of voters by failing to ensure that there is sufficient gritting.

Hammond will complain, quite rightly, that this is unfair and that he lacks the power to prevent severe weather. But there is very little that is fair about the politics of snow.

Watching our political class — as much in need of a proper holiday as the rest of the Britain – I make several observations:

1) Labour spokesmen, such as shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, have been accused of political opportunism because they are asking if the government is doing enough to deal with the snow. Johnson’s critics are missing the point — of course there is opportunism involved. The Tories know this, and used to do the same themselves during snow, floods etc. There isn’t all that much fun to be had in opposition, but after 13 years of being the party that had to produce spokesmen to go on TV to look out of touch Labour is currently enjoying playing “I blame the government”. There aren’t all that many votes in it when something like the weather is involved (unless there is obvious incompetence, as there was with the SNP’s transport minister who had to resign). But apply the right kind of pressure — as the street-wise Johnson is — and all kinds of temporary havoc can be created in a government. All one needs to suggest is that a report on severe snow by some chap from a reliable sounding organisation was commissioned by the previous government and was on the desk of the incoming transport minister. Why has the report been ignored? Who knew? Why weren’t it’s recommendations implemented? (They probably were.) Before you know it, Philip Hammond’s Christmas has been ruined as he spends most of his time doing interviews for rolling news channels and the rest being filmed spending the night at a Department of Transport emergency weather HQ set up hastily by press officers in Whitehall. Labour ministers have had to do this sort of stuff for years, whilst their Tory opposite numbers demanded something must be done. The positions are now reversed, and Labour needing cheered up will take its pleasure where it can find it.

2) Look out for the involvement of the Prime Minister. The snow story goes up a gear if he takes charge at any point. If Cameron convenes an emergency snow summit at Number 10, or even if it is briefed by Number 10 to the media that he has asked for urgent briefings from Hammond and his team on the “crisis”, then you know it spells trouble. Cameron takes a chairman of the board view of his job, rather than employing a hands on chief executive approach, but he’ll intervene if he thinks there’s a risk of substantial damage to the government’s reputation. All it would take would be the PM’s mother or brother being stuck in snow on the M40 on their way back from Christmas shopping and Hammond’s jacket would be on a shooglie peg (as it is put in Scotland).

3) Have any newspaper editors been trapped in the snow? Very important aspect of the developing story this one, particularly for Hammond. If the answer is yes, and it’s the editor of a really big selling newspaper, then the Transport Secretary has a huge problem. If so, leading articles will be written saying that the “chaos” shames Britain. It can be depended upon that demands will also be made for heads to roll. If there were to be more than one editor stranded in the snow it is difficult to see how Hammond could survive.

4) But none of this is directly the government’s fault? Well, yes, of course. Thus far Hammond has tried a novel strategy: he’s staying wedded to rationalism. He’s asking people to be reasonable and maintaining that in the circumstances everything is broadly ok. The strategic roads are all open and the problems at Heathrow and Gatwick are similar to those faced in other snow-bound parts of Europe. It is, he says, a mistake to claim that every other country suffers no disruption with this much snow. You get a lot of snow, you get problems. Let’s keep calm and carry on. But it’s a high risk approach. Such an analysis might have worked in the years before rolling news channels were invented. But now? Pressure can be applied around the clock. Hammond tried his rational schtick on various TV interviewers and the underlying tone of the interviewers was menacing and the implication clear: “Something must be done.” I’m not sure that rationalism is going to be enough.

5) Some good news for the government and Philip Hammond. People, particularly we journalists, tend to forget quite quickly. The human brain seems designed to filter out and suppress memories of all but the worst trauma. At the time of the Icelandic ash cloud, and the havoc wrought on U.K. air traffic, there was widespread journalistic panic. It was said widely that the government should do something; I fear I penned an excitable blog post suggesting as much, and I was not alone in doing so. At the height of the crisis, Gordon Brown pondered sending the Ark Royal aircraft carrier to Calais to ferry home Britons stranded on the continent, even though it is too big to dock there and thus of almost no use as a people carrier. Other sensible ministers including the then Chancellor talked him out of it. Within a few weeks, once life was back to normal, it was pretty much all forgotten. Now, when pictures of the erupting volcano are shown, people say: “Ooh, how spectacular and rather beautiful it was”, rather than “if Willie Walsh, the boss of BA is prepared to go up in a plane to risk death and prove it won’t crash from the effects of volcanic ash then why won’t the government get the civil aviation authorities to bend the rules and let the planes fly?”

Philip Hammond must hope that the snow situation doesn’t worsen to such an extent that there are demands for retribution and suggestions that a sacrifice, such as the transport secretary’s promising career, is required. But if he can get through it all in one piece, the snow “chaos” will be forgotten as soon as the sun comes out and the temperature goes up.

Snow fell in Australia on Monday, as the usual hot and summery December weather was replaced in parts by icy gusts sweeping up from the Southern Ocean, giving the country a taste of a white Christmas.

Snow has fallen in parts of east coast states New South Wales and Victoria, leaving ski resorts — some of which are usually snow-free at this time of year — with dumps of up to 10 centimetres.

2:02 pm December 21, 2010

FF wrote :

There is a valid political point to be made about snow and Heathrow. Heathrow is particularly susceptible to snarl ups because it only has two runways, unlike most of its international competitors. There's no possibility of increasing takeoff slots during the uptime to clear the backlog because there aren't any spare runways. Nor can you prepare one runway while you operate the other because they are both in use [or due to the lack of this preparation, ultimately not in use].

The previous government was going to add an additional runway to Heathrow. The current government blocked it.

6:27 pm December 20, 2010

Trevors Den wrote :

Mr Marshall - 'One thing that we could be seeing is an increase in precipitation due to there being more water in the atmosphere as a result of global warming ' One of the things wrong with that is there has been no warming since 1998. If anything its been cooling. Even Prof Jones of EA CRU admits that.

The temp gauge on my car this morning was showing minus 8.5. Someone in the shop earlier said it was minus 11.
Sadly the other problem with your argument is that more water vapour (the main greenhouse gas) the more clouds which give an albedo effect.

We have had steady warming since 1750 - long before CO2. Many of us know the difference between weather and climate - that is not what the warmist alarmists were saying in 1998. The warmest year that century of course was 1935 - go figure.

Not that Tiggeronabike is going to take notice. We have had 4 cold winters not just here but globally. This year seems to be the coldest in 100 years. This means nothing, unless you look back at what the warming alarmists were saying 12 and more years ago.
Hammond was told to expect a mild winter by the Met Office - now he has seen the light.